We Are Born To Be Free

““…we were born fully equipped to break free of past confining conditions that no longer serve us.  And it is our destiny to do so. We were born to be free, to expand our horizons by going where we have never gone before, and not to hang out in the relative comfort and safety of the nest, the known. There is a place within us that is courageous beyond our human understanding; it yearns to explore beyond the boundaries of our daily life.” – Dennis Merrit Jones

I believe that true happiness, bliss, joy or whatever you want to call it – comes through being absolutely free, physically and mentally.

Look around and you will see that in absolutely almost everybody, there exists a perpetual suffering, a constant struggle with existence and nature itself. We resist who we are, we yearn for things we don’t have and once we get what we want there is always a thirst for more. They say there are two assured ways of being unhappy; getting what you want and not getting what you want. Therein lies the problem.

So now we have an opportunity to think different about freedom. This isn’t a freedom from a job or society’s shackles, but freedom from the mind. A freedom from wanting and desiring unnecessarily. The freedom from the chasing for happiness. If you chase something this generally implies that it’s running away, always allusive. You can’t chase happiness because it’s allusive. It’s something that ensues. It ensues from living a good life.

You don’t have to be happy to live a good life, but you need a good life in order to be happy. And the definition of good is really just how you perceive things. It’s relative. A good life is regardless of circumstance, regardless of what it is that you’re “meant” to have. It is ultimately what you decide it to be, and this is true freedom. Unshackling ourselves from past conditioning.

We are bombarded everyday by things we should have that will make us happy.

“Do you wake up tired in the morning” Then you need to buy this!”

This skews our perceptions of happiness, and it’s take on happiness is incredibly short sited. We may gain some pleasures from whatever we get, but it is elusive and short lasting. Make a conscious effort to remember how you feel after you buy something, and do it again two weeks later. You’re desire or excitement for it disappears.

We see posters, TV commercials and hear radio ads and we are manipulated to believe that this is what we need. Studying marketing at University, I get taught on how people think, what color will make who buy what, how high to place items in supermarket shelf’s, and many other tricks that will make people buy stuff. “This product is reliable and provides good value to people” doesn’t cut it anymore – they can’t sell enough. Rather than the product speaking for themselves – it’s a hunger game for who can manipulate more people into buying your product. The side effect of this is the conditioned mind – people walk around with skewed intentions and wrong perceptions of what will make them happy.

We are not really free. We are human beings with certain ways of behaving and reacting. And people know this and they manipulate it.

Ultimate freedom is breaking free from this unconscious conditioning. To do this we must become conscious. Become conscious of our actions, what we intend to do, and how we want our lives to play out.

To do this we must start looking inwards. All our lives we are bombarded but things outside of us, by our parents, teachers, media and advertisements. Take advice and inspiration from them, but don’t let them dictate your actions. You’ll end up being 35 years old, rich, feeling empty and having a midlife crisis.

To live consciously means to think about what you want to do. Ask yourself what you’ve always been good at and what your ultimate passion is in life. Don’t be so concerned about the money part, just live your life with passion and money will come later. Get good at what you love, and eventually you’ll master it. You can then teach other people, sell books, and a million other ways but you don’t know them yet.

But the most important part is action – to be constantly moving forward: learn and grow.